Richard Flynn (aka Tdol) is an English teacher and the Site Editor here at UsingEnglish.com. Here, he talks about English usage that catches his eye or ear, and looks at language issues that interest or puzzle him.

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Results tagged “Spam”

A number of posts have been deleted in the last few days because they are cloned accounts of a banned user. We're slow to ban members of the forum, but once we ban someone, the ban stays in place and any subsequent accounts that person makes will also be banned. We have two particularly persistent cases that keep coming back. They are different from regular trolls, who come back in hidden guises to try to start trouble.

On an average day, we have to ban at least half a dozen spam accounts, and these are the ones that get through the security- hundreds fail to get this far. Spammers use programs to auto-register with sites and often fill their profiles with ridiculous details.

On an average day, we have to ban at least half a dozen spam accounts, and these are the ones that get through the security- hundreds fail to get this far. Spammers use programs to auto-register with sites and often fill their profiles with ridiculous details.

People who try to use the forum simply to promote sites, even ESL and language sites, may find their posts get deleted and their accounts closed. If people with sites to promote that are relevant contribute to the forum, that is fair play and we will leave the links, as long as they are not excessive. The forum is a place for discussing language and not a free advertising platform, and if people engage with other people posting, answer questions, participate in discussions and include a link, then that seems fair enough.

The language polls area of our site allows comments and they are displayed immediately without moderation. This does mean that we get some comments that are nonsensical or just plain rude. Having made it impossible to post links, we no longer get spam comments, but we do occasionally get someone who thinks that is funny to type random letters or rude words in the comments. We can check the list of latest comments and delete any nonsense we get.

We have recently had a spate of comments in our Polls section which contain lists of URLs to gambling sites, offers for herbal viagra, dodgy diet pills and the rest of the rubbish people keep finding in their inboxes. We would like to apologise for this. When this started happening to our Weblogs, we were able to buy software that meant that any comment had to be approved, which guaranteed that such posts were deleted before they appeared onsite.